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From: djmolny@cuae2.ATT.COM (DJ Molny)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: 6300+ question
Message-ID: <4289@cuae2.ATT.COM>
Date: Fri, 14-Nov-86 13:51:15 EST
Article-I.D.: cuae2.4289
Posted: Fri Nov 14 13:51:15 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Nov-86 05:09:17 EST
References: <3908@jhunix.UUCP> <124@uxrd1.UUCP>
Reply-To: djmolny@cuae2.UUCP (-DJ Molny)
Organization: AT&T - /app/eng, Lisle, IL
Lines: 22

In article <124@uxrd1.UUCP> thk@uxrd1.UUCP (Tom Kiermaier ) writes:
>Another little quirk is that the swapper uses up an VERY large percentage
>of the CPU time. After having my machine on for an hour (and not even
>logged in) the swapper shows around 55 minutes of CPU time. This definitely
>inhibits the performance of the machine.

This is *NOT* a performance problem, merely a misleading bit of bookkeeping.

The swapper is actually a sink for idle cpu time;  if no user processes
are running, an idle loop is executed and the time is attributed by the
swapper.  Thus, if the swapper accumulates 55 cpu minutes per hour, other
programs are using 5 minutes per hour, implying that your machine is
idle about 91.6% of the time.

Many versions of UNIX exhibit this behaviour.


-- 
						Regards,
						DJ Molny
						N9609U
						ihnp4!cuae2!djmolny